Today, one of my friends posted an article from the National Post entitled What Would Bonobos Do? The short article is a blurb on polyamory, where men and women live in “open relationships” (look it up if you don’t know what I mean). My friend added the quote “What would bonobos do? Always a good question to ask.”

The thinking behind my friend’s comments is this: Humans are descended from apes, and bonobos are one of our ancestors (or, more accurately, humans and bonobos share a common ancestor; you and your cousin share a common ancestor in your grandparents but you are not descended from your cousin nor vice versa. Also, humans are more closely related to chimpanzees than bonobos. But bonobos are the second closest to us on the human evolutionary chain of all species that still survive).

Anyhow, because humans are descended from bonobos, then we should have many of our behavioral practices in common with them. Bonobos have very promiscuous sexual relationships. Males and females have many sexual partners and even have it recreationally. What my friend on Facebook is saying is that polyamory is perfectly acceptable in the animal kingdom, even among our closest ancestors. Why does society condemn this perfectly, biologically normal behavior in humans? It must be because we have rules imposed by others (usually religious in origin, but not always) that tries to regulate our sexual behavior.

That’s the meaning behind “WWBD”. It is a play on the term “What would Jesus do?” because a bonobo has no problem with multiple sexual partners, males or females. Therefore, what’s the big deal if humans do it? Prohibitions against it are arbitrary, and the enforcement of it was arbitrary.

I know this is what my friend means because he is a Libertarian, but also because I have read other articles that try to use nature as way to rationalize non-monogamous relationships as okay since animals do it (especially our closer primate relatives), but it was only through society’s rules that it became condemned.

Does my friend have a point? Are humans naturally promiscuous, and have authorities places rules on us in order to regulate our behavior because of their own standards of morality and tricked us into agreeing with them?

To answer this question, we need to understand a few facts about human evolution.

The goal of evolution is survival and reproduction.

Species that procreate survive. The ones that don’t go extinct. Thus, many of the behaviors we have today are optimally designed to ensure that we survive in our environments, and that we can reproduce.

Humans are more closely related to chimpanzees than bonobos.

While it is true that bonobos are polyamorous (many-to-many sexual relationship), it doesn’t mean that humans originally were. Our common ancestor may have been monogamous and then after we branched off, bonobos became polyamorous and humans remained monogamous.

Or, the other possibility is that our common ancestor was a one-to-many relationship where one male had sexual relationships with many females (think of a harem). This is what we see in chimpanzees. Anthropological research has determined that is the most likely behavior we see in our common ancestors as well.

Thus, while bonobos may be many-to-many, our more recent ancestors were one-to-many. You don’t see too many (male) writers advocating that in the western world.

Males and females have different reproductive goals.

From a biological perspective, men increase their chances of reproducing by engaging in sexual relationships with more than one partner. However, women do not. They cannot have more than one child than they could normally deliver. That is, having more sexual partners does not increase the number of children they can have in a certain time frame.

Thus, from an evolutionary standpoint, promiscuity doesn’t make sense for women. But what does make sense for them? Selecting a strong partner.

They can increase their offspring’s chance of survival by picking a partner with good genes. In the animal kingdom, this is done by picking the strongest, best looking males. The Birds of Paradise in New Guinea and Australia best exemplify this – the top male on the pyramid mates with 80% of the females. The number 2 male mates with the remaining 20%. The other males get nothing.

You don’t see too many male writers advocating that in the western world because most of us realize we are not at the top of the pyramid.

Females increase their odds of offspring survival if males help raise the children.

Humans are expensive to raise. They consume a lot of resources compared to other animals. A male who sticks around and helps raise his child increases the child’s chances of survival, and therefore ensuring his genes proliferate.

Females benefit from this also, but it doesn’t necessarily matter which male it is – the father or some other male.

Males don’t want to raise other males’ children.

In the animal kingdom, the biggest losers are the males who raise the children of other males. He’ll ensure that his rivals’ genes survive while not spreading his own genes.

This is a big point. The male wants the female to not be promiscuous and it makes sense for her to not be because it doesn’t help her much. But the male increases his odds of spreading his genes if he is not monogamous but is promiscuous.

So, he could be the father of two sets of children and help raise two different sets of kids.

Females don’t want males to split their time between her kids, and some other female’s kids with the same father. They evolved strategies to combat this.

From the female’s perspective, if the male bird mates with her and some other bird, he may help raise both sets of children. However, this weakens her position. The time the male spends with the other birds’ children diverts resources away from her own. This decreases their chance of survival.

To combat this, human females developed a very powerful strategy: concealed ovulation.

For much of human history, females did not know when they ovulated and become fertile to reproduce. Neither did men. It is only during the 20th century that we became fully aware of when pregnancy could occur. This is concealed ovulation, and it differs from the animal kingdom because most females signal their receptivity such as emitting scents, changing colors on parts of their bodies, and so forth. In other words, it is obvious when females can conceive.

But not to humans. We didn’t know when conception was likely.

What is the ramifications of concealed ovulation?

It means that if neither men nor women are sure when a women can conceive children, then neither the men nor women can be certain who the father is in a polyamorous society. It could be Father A, or Father B, or Father C.

But neither Father A, B, nor C want to raise each other’s children. In order to combat this, they need to ensure that their mates are faithful and not promiscuous. And in order to ensure that their children survive and proliferate their genes, they need to stick around and help raise the kids. They also need to guard against any other males who may “raid the nest” when they are out of town. This ensures a one-to-one relationship instead of a one-to-many relationship amongst males and females.

Thus, concealed ovulation is an evolutionary strategy to increase a species odds of survival. One of its consequences is monogamy.

Monogamy results in winners and losers.

In a society of birds, there are high status males, high status females, low status males, and low status females.

Who wins and loses in monogamous birds society?

Low status males win because if the females flock to high status males, they can’t all have high status males. After the best, all that’s left is the rest.

High status males sort-of-win, but not entirely. They win by ensuring monogamy for everyone else, but promiscuity for themselves. They will still be seen as valuable by females, high or low status.

However, unattached low status females lose. They don’t have their pick of the litter because the high status males are taken. They have to settle for the left-overs of low status males.

Taking all of this together, humans did not spell out monogamy because someone wanted to impose rules on others. Instead, it arose because it increased the species’ odds of survival and worked better than other mechanisms.

To ask “What would bonobos do?” is not relevant because the circumstances of bonobos is not the same as humans. We developed in different ecological niches.

It was only after we evolved monogamy that we rationalized them using various means: It promotes family values, or it’s the natural way of things, or it forms the nucleus of the family.

Our ability to reason and create logical arguments arose in our brains (the neo-cortex) after we became monogamous. That’s why it’s hard to describe why we should be one-to-one (this doesn’t guarantee we will be, it only explains why it arose).

But it did not come about because some people wanted to control the behavior of others; it only seems that way because we aren’t familiar with its evolutionary advantages in our species’ history.